World CommunityPodcast #7: Postmodern Politics At the end of Podcast #6 in this series I discussed a dilemma that currently afflicts the world community. The difficulty is that sovereignty in the modern era was located in nation states, but disaster threatens as long as the supreme authority to wage war or protect the environment is held by individual nations. Immanuel Kant proposed the cosmopolitan idea embraced by the ancient Stoics as a way of eluding the threat of perpetual war among states. In this podcast I will consider the possibility of looking beyond nationalism and modernism to a new postmodern era in which the cosmopolitan idea prevails. In 1996, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum of the University of Chicago developed the cosmopolitan idea in a book called For the Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism (Beacon Press). This year another philosopher, Kwame Anthony Appiah of Princeton University published Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (Norton & Company, 2006). But the idea of looking beyond nation states for the foundation of world community also has support from people who are working in the trenches of political action and business management. I will begin this podcast by considering some writings by Václav Havel and Kenichi Ohmae that add to this search for the fundamental principles of world community. As the 20th century drew to a close, a new basis for international order emerged in Europe. Václav Havel, who was then President of the Czech Republic, reminded us of a traditional way to think about relations among states. He said:It is as if, while constantly talking about Europe, we have entirely ignored one of the pillars of the European tradition —­ universalism, the commandment to think of everyone, to act as everyone should act, and to look for universally acceptable solutions (Václav Havel, “The Hope for Europe,” Charlemagne Plenary Address, Aachen, Germany, May 15, 1996). Havel linked European identity to universal thinking, opening a dialogue that potentially includes all people. In this podcast I will take a closer look at the link between that kind of dialogue and the essence of universal thinking. Philosophical dialogue is required, because universality is a philosophical idea, one whose full meaning can only be acquired through rational analysis and justification. If what we are seeking is truly universal, then it helps us understand not only European identity but also the identity everyone else. Václav Havel and Universal Thinking Václav Havel follows the path charted by Immanual Kant when he urges all people: (1) to think of everyone, (2) to act as everyone should act, and (3) to look for universally acceptable solutions. As he uses the term universal, it is first and foremost an ethical concept, one he develops at greater length in an essay titled “Politics as Practical Morality,” in which he claims that politics and morality go together. He goes farther, insisting that law, democracy, and even market economy all require universal values, moral imperatives, commitments, standards, and ideals. Havel denies being a romantic or a utopian; his personal experience has left him with fewer illusions than most people. He calls himself a realist: real politics and real morality are metaphysically grounded, oriented to the whole of nature and of life, what Havel calls “the memory of being.” Some of his recent words concerning the universal nature of morality are worth repeating:The concept of a metaphysically anchored sense of responsibility has been a cornerstone of the values that underlie the European tradition. And it seems to me that the time of twilight, taken as an opportunity for self-reflection, is a direct invitation to rededicate ourselves to this European tradition and to admit clearly that there are values transcending our immediate interest, that we are not accountable solely to our party, our electorate, our lobby, or our state, but to the whole of humanity, including those who come after us, and that the ultimate worth of our deeds will be decided somewhere beyond the circle of mortals who surround us (Havel, “The Hope for Europe”).Universality does not mean abstract generality. Havel is quick to point out that what is beautiful and interesting in life, in nature, in society, and in the world lies in the unique, special character of individuals, communities, countries, and peoples. To embrace the universal requires us to know and appreciate the particular. Universal ideas should also not be confused with ideology. Havel believes that the end of modernism coincides with the end of ideology, which is being replaced by ideas. How do ideas differ from ideology? The most important difference is that ideas are freely thought by individuals, rather than being generated by the state or the party and imposed on individuals. Ideas arise from the depth of individual conscience, whereas ideology comes from power and external authority. Ideas are universal; ideology is limited to a particular sphere of influence and is designed to achieve parochial goals. For example, the ideas of freedom and of human rights are universal. They cannot be divided, because they arise from our nature as human beings (Václav Havel, “The Search for a New European Home”). If freedom is threatened or human rights are denied anywhere, they are simultaneously undermined everywhere, because human freedom and dignity themselves have been attacked. When Václav Havel, the playwright, was jailed because of what he wrote, freedom of speech was, in principle, also endangered in Tokyo, London, Cairo, Caracas, and Boston. Havel’s political and ethical service strengthens the existential dimension of his eloquence. These are not the words from the ivory tower; they come from a practical politician who bears the scars of numerous campaigns, before, during, and after his tenure in high office. What he says of politics can also be applied to other practical fields. Consider the world of business. We have come to expect pragmatic compromise and moral blindness not only in politics but also in the competitive arena of the free market. Economic development, especially strategic planning by many multinational corporations, seems to be moving away from nation states toward new forms of economic alliance.Economic RegionalismIn the economic sphere, a major battle of the 20th century was the struggle between those who favored central planning and control and those who insisted on deregulation and free markets. Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw, in a book called Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy (Simon and Schuster, 1998), frame this conflict as a choice between the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, who favored central planning and regulation by nations, and those of Friedrich von Hayek, who promoted deregulation and free markets. By the end of the 20th century, global markets developed to the point that it became impossible for even the most powerful nations to regulate them. Kenichi Ohmae, in a book called The End of the Nation State: The Rise of Regional Economies, explains why the nation state has ceased to function as the primary locus of economic activity. For more than two decades Ohmae served as a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, a business management consulting firm that advises leading companies on issues of strategy, organization, technology, and operations. He is the founder of “Reform of Heisei,” a citizen’s political movement dedicated to reforming Japanese political and administrative systems, roles that place him in a position of considerable economic and political influence. Ohmae took the lead in rejecting Francis Fukuyama’s simplistic claim that the end of the Cold War between Soviet-style communism and liberal democracy brought about the “end of history.” Ohmae said: “Larger numbers of people from more points on the globe than ever before have aggressively come forward to participate in history … and they have demands—economic demands—to make” (Ohmae, The End of the Nation State). Ohmae identifies four components that define current global economic development: (1) investment, (2) industry, (3) information technology, and (4) individual consumers (ibid. pp. 2-4). As those factors have come to dominate, “traditional nation states have become unnatural, even impossible, business units in a global economy” (Ibid. p. 5). Rather than unification, political forces favor disintegration. The Soviet Union no longer exists. Global economic forces are creating geographical units that are redrawing existing maps. New entities have emerged such as San Diego/Tijuana; Hong Kong/Southern China; Silicon Valley; and the Growth Triangle of Singapore, Johore (Malaysia), and the Riau Islands of Indonesia (ibid. p. 80). Ohmae believes that regions such as these will drive future economic growth throughout the globe. Regional economies that cut across national boundaries welcome foreign investment, attract industry, thrive on information technology, and lure consumers from all over the globe. They breed internationalism and serve as an antidote to social tensions (ibid. p. 94). Nation states, according to Ohmae’s analysis, serve as barriers to economic growth and “opt for solutions that, however wasteful or inefficient, maintain at least the illusion of control” (ibid. p. 98). Ohmae opposes what he calls a UN-style amalgam of nation-based organizations. He favors a “region state-focused network of capability and competence” (ibid. p. 101). The test of their viability is whether real managers and real companies with real dollars to invest will promote their existence. Multinational corporations will avoid protectionist nation states and focus their developmental activity on region states that welcome them and enhance their growth (ibid. p. 101). Rather than debate “the theoretical merits of communism versus democracy or of state control versus free markets,” Ohmae says: “It is time for focusing on what works, on what has shown itself best able to improve a people’s quality of life” (ibid. p. 128). They should serve as catalysts for the activities of regions. He paraphrases the philosopher William James: “Wealth, like knowledge, grows in spots and spreads out from there” (ibid. p. 144). Is this a reasonable basis for world community? Ohmae’s strategic advice for multinational corporations as well as for nation states fosters the notion that this is indeed the way to bring about a “period of joy, serenity, prosperity, and justice.” He claims that economic reality rather than utopian dreams promotes the prosperity essential for the good life. One limitation of Ohmae’s approach is that it is confined to economic considerations. It favors economics over ethics and politics, assuming that economic values are sufficient for human existence. But he cannot refrain from making implicit moral judgments that are essential for his position but for which he provides no grounding or justification. They rest entirely on an assumed but unsupported demand that prosperity should prevail over other values — and prosperity is defined strictly in terms of the average Gross National Product. The closest he comes to making an explicit moral claim emerges when he praises the “region states,” which welcome any foreign or domestic contribution that adds to the “common good” (ibid. p. 120). But what does he mean by the “common good”? Examination of his argument reveals that the only thing it could mean is the good of those in the prosperous economic regions, especially when he rejects taxation and regulation of those regions to support the “civil minimum” of people who live outside them. That, of course, is not a “common” good but a good limited to specific geographical areas, which is based on economic values that masquerade as moral values. Ohmae is not alone in this error. Anyone who objects to taxation or regulation as being unjust in principle makes the same mistake. The problem is not that such people make moral claims but that they make them without acknowledging their moral nature and without realizing that they are grounded in a reality that transcends the economic interests of individuals, families, cities, nations, regions, and corporations. To exist as a human being is to live in a moral universe, because human beings are, by nature, moral beings. Ethical action requires reasons, purposes, and intentions. Otherwise we become automatons, part of a mindless series of heteronomous causes and effects. Universal Values Václav Havel’s attempt to ground his universal claims in reality places him in this philosophical dialogue. Unfortunately, he tends merely to invoke his position rather than analyze and justify it. In “Politics as Practical Morality” his appeal to the “memory of being” as the ground of values is linked to what believers call God, but that changes from sect to sect, culture to culture, and from time to time. In order to provide the intellectual foundations for all people of good will who wish to “live in truth,” as Havel puts it, we must seek what us universal, not what is relative or subjective. For the reasons stated by Kant in his ethical writings, one essential requirement for a cognitive foundation is that it must be truly open to all people. That kind of openness does not mean that everyone actually will participate in the philosophical dialogue, but it must be, in principle, a universe of discourse in which all may enter. Genuine philosophical dialogue has that kind of openness. This is the essence of Socratic dialogue, the prototype for philosophical discourse. Socrates brought philosophy down from the Olympian heights and gave it a legitimate place in the Agora. It is a conversation open to people from all walks of life, all nations, all economic conditions, and all classes, races, and genders. Another essential feature of universal dialogue is that it must be prepared to turn back upon itself, even questioning its own assumptions and presuppositions. This kind of openness breeds the opinion that philosophers never come to any conclusions, that they are unsuited for practical affairs such as politics and business, and that they dispute even the most sacred beliefs. This is why Socrates was put on trial.Euthyphro: What are you doing at the courthouse, Socrates? [2] Why have you left the Lyceum? Surely you’re not taking legal action, as I am. Socrates: It’s not an action, Euthyphro; “indictment” is the word the Athenians use.Euthyphro: What? Someone must have indicted you. I can’t believe that you have indicted someone else.Socrates: Certainly not.Euthyphro: Then someone has indicted you?Socrates: Yes.Euthyphro: Who is he?Socrates: I hardly know him, Euthyphro; he’s not well known. He’s a young man named Meletus from Pitthus. Perhaps you have seen him; he has long straight hair, a nose like a beak, and a downy beard.Euthyphro: No, I don’t remember him, Socrates. What’s the charge?Socrates: The charge? It’s a serious one, showing a lot of character in the young man. He shouldn’t be despised for that. He says he knows how young people are corrupted and who corrupts them. I suppose he must be a wise man who, seeing that I am anything but wise, has found me out and is going to accuse me of corrupting his young friends. Our mother, the state, is to be the judge of this. He’s the only one of our politicians who starts the right way, by cultivating the young. He’s like a good farmer, taking care of the sprouts, weeding out those of us who destroy them. [3] That’s his first step; later he will attend to the older branches. If he continues as he has begun, he will be a great public benefactor.Euthyphro: I hope so, Socrates, but I fear that it will be the other way around. In my opinion, he is aiming a blow at a sacred part of the state by attacking you. Plato depicts Socrates as willing and able to fight for Athens on the battlefield, challenge the rich and powerful people who ruled over their fellow citizens with an iron fist, and, above all, to die for his ideas of goodness, truth, and justice. The universal claim implicit in this kind of openness is the familiar Socratic belief that the unexamined life it no life for a human being. What does it mean to be a human being? To answer that question we must go beyond biology. We humans are what we are because of a kind of consciousness, a quality of mind. Unless we are self-conscious and reflective, we simply cannot be fully human, and that means we must be educated as human beings. By “education” I do not mean formal education, which is neither necessary nor sufficient for humanity. The NAZIS who planned the death camps were among the best-educated human beings the world has ever seen. Whether in science, politics, or in the military, learning to obey orders or to acquire power is not sufficient to achieve humanity. Computers are much better at calculating and obeying orders than are humans, but that does not provide them with human existence. Plato examines the kind of education I have in mind in several of his dialogues. In Protagoras, for example, Socrates and Protagoras discuss the acquisition of moral knowledge and debate whether it can be taught. The famous Sophist Protagoras is best known for teaching that “man is the measure of all things.” In that dialogue, education it is linked to political wisdom, the kind of knowledge without which a human community cannot exist. This kind of education provides the quality by which we learn to “rule over ourselves,” as Socrates puts it in the dialogue Gorgias (Agora Publications, Inc. 1995, p. 491). In English, terms such as “culture” and “civilization” are sometimes used to convey the sense of this essential human quality, but the meaning of these words has been shaped by recent relativistic interpretations. Cultural relativism is antithetical to the project of Martha Nussbaum, who focuses her discussion of world community on the Stoic concept of the world citizen. “We should recognize humanity wherever it occurs, and give its fundamental ingredients, reason and moral capacity, our first allegiance and respect” (For the Love of Country, p. 7). She also embraces Kant’s idea of the “kingdom of ends,” the universal moral community that functions to inspire and regulate moral and political conduct (ibid. p. 8). Kwame Anthony Appiah, who contributed an essay to the volume edited by Nussbaum, agrees that we must establish certain universal values to ground the cosmopolitan idea, but he also insists that difference and diversity must be preserved. He says:A liberal cosmopolitanism of the sort I am defending might put its point like this: We value the variety of human forms of social and cultural life, we do not want everybody to become part of a homogeneous global culture, and we know that this will mean that there will also be local differences (both within and between states) in moral climate. So long as these differences meet certain general ethical constraints — so long, in particular, as political institutions respect basic human rights — we are happy to let them be (For the Love of Country, p. 26). Here we find ourselves between Scylla and Charybdis. Can we establish universality without invoking absolute values that would create a homogeneous and uniform global culture? Can we preserve diversity without being sucked into the whirlpool of relativism? In his recent book, Cosmopolitanism, Appiah devotes an entire chapter to the philosophical tradition known as logical positivism that played a central role in the intellectual history of the 20th century. Positivism is a major source of relativism in our era. I agree with Appiah that we must find a way to escape from relativism and positivism if we hope to find a conceptual basis for values that can ground a world community. In my next podcast, I will begin with a closer look at that challenge and possible ways of meeting it.